Stock Entities and release only a percentage of them

[vinc91]

Hello,

I would like to be able to stock some entities in one room (using the storage panel?), and when one special entity goes in this room, release a part or the entities previously that were in the room (using UNSTORE block??).
Can you please give me some advices to do this?

Thank you

[ewilliams]

If I understand your question correctly, I doubt the STORE/UNSTORE block pair will meet your needs. The "storage" those blocks work with is a virtual, conceptual storage useful for gathering performance statistics. Let us assume you want to put an entity in a physical "detention room" where it must stay until invited out by another entity. To do this, begin by using the HOLD block from the Advanced Process template. This HOLD should be of Type "Infinite Hold". To invite this entity out of detention, send another entity to a REMOVE block (also Advanced Process template). There it will remove the detained entity from the HOLD block (specifically, remove it from the Queue automatically associated with that HOLD block). Arena will conveniently gather performance metrics (e.g., average contents, maximum contents, average length of stay, maximum length of stay) relative to that Queue.

[vinc91]

Thank your for your helpful answer. That helped me a lot.
I was wondering if you can release more than one item from the Hold block. I saw that we can choose the rank of the item to remove, but not the number.

Sincerly

[Hirotaro]

It might be worthwhile to look into Pickup block from the Blocks Template. You can easily find information on that block in the Arena Help.

If it will not satisfy all the requirements imposed by the system you are modelling, I believe you should create a loop using Search and Remove blocks combined with some decision blocks(to decide uppon a quantity to remove at a given instance). Using these blocks you should get any flexible solution you need.

[ewilliams]

To my knowledge, only one entity at a time can be removed from a Hold Queue by a visit to a Remove block -- but the removing entity could cycle in a loop, repeatedly visiting the Remove block until all entities needing removal had been removed.